The Lost Child Read online

  “Vampires don’t talk about their pasts.”

  “I know. And I know there’s so much he would sooner forget altogether. But…” I sighed. “When you’re with someone, then you want to be with all of them, not just the parts they want to show you. It’s hard to have them deliberately keep something back. I mean… I’d made my peace with it, but now something is bothering him and I sense it is something in his past. The problem with vampires is there is so much in their pasts, you know? Do you get that with Klassje?” Introducing his girlfriend to the conversation was a deliberate move on my part.

  “Umm…” Dureau hedged. “I suppose… I suppose we haven’t reached that point in our relationship yet. It’s still very new. Still learning about each other and maybe that bigger, deeper stuff hasn’t surfaced yet.”

  “But you two are good?” Was I pushing too hard?

  “Yes. It’s…” He tried to find the right words. “It’s different.

  She’s different to… Anyone else I might have been with.” He looked at me and I realized I was the ‘anyone else he might have been with’.

  I wasn’t sure that had gone entirely as I wanted it to.

  “Vampires, huh?” I asked with a laugh, wanting to change the subject.

  “Who’d have thought you and I would both end up with one?”

  “They do make for complicated partners,” I acknowledged.

  “I suppose everything worked out for the best.” He sounded wistful. But maybe I was just imagining it. In the darkness I was unable to see his face and it was all too easy to impose emotions onto his voice.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “You should talk to Sinjin.”

  “That’s a short cut to an argument.”

  “Maybe it’s an argument the two of you need to have.”

  There was a silence between us while I weighed his words. “I feel like that visit to Gaia changed him.”

  “He went through a lot.”

  I nodded— a meaningless gesture in the dark, but I did it anyway.

  “More than he’s admitted. I get that it must be tough to talk about.”

  “You went through some stuff too, you know?”

  “Yes, but…” Something I’d always loved about being with Sinjin was that there never seemed any need for words. We talked, of course, but much of it was inconsequential. The big things went unspoken, but were implicit in our behavior. We spoke with our bodies and with our souls rather than with our mouths. I had always appreciated that—that he could say more with a caress than with a speech. On the other hand, sometimes, stuff had to be said out loud, or else it festered, slowly poisoning a relationship.

  “It’s easier said than done.”

  “You’re afraid of what he might say if you force him into sharing?” Once again, Dureau was right on the money.

  “What if meeting Gaia made him see us differently. He’s ageless and I’m not.”

  “Well, you can slow your aging,” Dureau argued.

  “Yes, but not compared to a vampire.” I breathed out slowly.

  “What if Sinjin never saw us as a long-term thing and now we have a child and he’s only staying with me because of her?”

  “That doesn’t sound like the Sinjin I know, even if I don’t necessarily like him,” replied Dureau. “I mean… I almost wish it did. There’s little love lost between us, Bryn, you know that. I think he’s arrogant and cold and thinks he’s better than the rest of us. But I wouldn’t call him disloyal or dishonest. Sure, he plays things close to his chest, but I don’t think he’d mislead you like that.”

  Nor did I really. But such are the fears that manifest in the night. And when you don’t know what’s wrong, your mind makes up all sorts of things to fill in the gaps. There was something Sinjin wasn’t telling me, and it was driving a wedge between us.

  “What if he doesn’t want the child?” There. I ’d said it. Even harder than the thought of Sinjin tiring of me was the possibility that he was fine with me but had no wish to be a Dad.

  “What?”

  I shrugged. “My pregnancy wasn’t planned. And it also wasn’t something either one of us had ever expected to deal with.”

  “He went to great lengths to protect that child.”

  “That’s just Sinjin being Sinjin. He doesn’t like you, for example, but you know he’d protect you if he had to.”

  “I do know that,” said Dureau. “And damn the man, but I would do the same for him.”

  I laughed, but it was melancholic. “A baby changes everything.”

  “But maybe in a good way.”

  For a moment some treacherous part of my mind dared to consider how much easier this would all be if I was having a child with Dureau.

  I moved past the thought quickly. It just… it didn’t feel right.

  “You’re right. But I still worry he’s tiring of me.”

  “I doubt any man could do that.”

  I wished he hadn’t said that.

  “Let’s get some sleep,” I said and then sighed deeply.

  “Goodnight Bryn.”

  “Goodnight.”

  EIGHT

  BRYN

  Dureau and I woke early, even though the sunlight struggled to filter through the dense foliage above us. We’d spent the night unmolested by walking willows or any of the other denizens of Faery.

  “Guess the rowan worked,” I grinned.

  “Who knows?” shrugged Dureau. “Maybe this place isn’t so dangerous after all.”

  That was one possibility but, for some reason, I liked to think the rather beautiful trees which stood around us, heavy with red berries, had offered us a hospitable place in which to spend the night. When Dureau’s back was turned, fishing out rations from his pack for a light breakfast, I patted the trunk of the tree beneath which I’d slept and whispered, “Thank you.”

  Protection against bad spirits.

  That could mean all kinds of things but it felt like the kind of protection I might need today. What was it Odran had said about Faery reflecting what you brought into it? I couldn’t remember exactly, but at the castle the desire that had been lurking just beneath the skin of both Sinjin and I had been brought very much to the surface. Now something other than desire festered between us and I wasn’t looking forward to how Faery might react to that.

  I knew Sinjin well enough to know that when he was in a mood, it was tough to pull him out of it. And when I spent time with Dureau, he overreacted.

  So, how was he going to handle this? How was he handling it now?

  “Which way then?” asked Dureau after we ’d eaten a quick breakfast.

  I closed my eyes and reached out with my mind. I could usually find Sinjin, like a black hole, distorting the gravity of my personal universe, bending the fabric of my mind towards him.

  Even so, in our world he could be hard to find because there was such a confusion of minds, some with a similar dark energy. But here in Faery, he was like a lighthouse in my mental landscape; there was nothing else like Sinjin out there (with the possible exception of Klassje). The vampire mind is nothing like the Fae one.

  “Got him.” I pointed. “This way.”

  Dureau nodded. “Excellent. And we skirt around anything that looks like a blackthorn tree.”

  “Agreed.” I would never look at blackthorns the same way again.

  As we walked, I wondered if Sinjin had wanted to come back and look for me. It would have been the wrong thing to do; as the only sensitive in the party, I was the one best placed to do the searching. But it was the sort of thing Sinjin would have wanted to do. He would have wanted to come back and save me. There was so much energy in Sinjin, he needed to be forever on the move, forever doing something, burning that rampant energy somehow.

  Sitting around and waiting wasn’t Sinjin’s style. Even if it wasn’t always ideal, it was one of the things I loved about him.

  Not all that energy was good, some of it was dark and self-destructive, but it made him who he was.
When someone was in danger, he rushed in devil-may-care; when there was a problem, he tackled it headlong; when he and I were together, he swept me off my feet. How did you not love a man like that?

  But what would it mean when we had a child?

  ‘ The thing that no one ever tells you about kids ,’ Jolie had confided in me once, when Emma was younger, ‘ is that they are incredibly boring .’

  It didn’t mean you didn’t love them , but a toddler can do the same thing over and over and over for hours on end and never get bored with it. They will ask to be read the same book, to hear the same song, for you to make the same face, and it will never get any less funny to them, even as you feel like jumping out of a window. How on earth would a man like Sinjin cope with that?

  I hadn’t thought about it a lot , but I should have. I should have considered all of this already. Because Sinjin wasn’t a regular parent. He was Sinjin Sinclair, Master Vampire, and the phrase ‘ set in your ways ’ takes on whole new meaning when you’re six centuries old. If you think you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, try teaching them to an old vampire!

  I never had any doubt of Sinjin’s love for me. And if I did have a doubt, then he was always there to put those doubts to rest.

  But one of the reasons I knew how much he loved me was because I also knew how hard it had been for him. His life had been that of a lone wolf, and a lone wolf who got plenty of tail. Meeting me had made him want to settle down, which was pretty damn flattering, given how many other women there must have been through the centuries. But settling down was a big change for Sinjin and one I’m sure he’d struggled with. Now another big change was looming and a far, far bigger one. Although he’d settled down for me, it wasn’t as if we lived a sedentary life, popping to the shops once a week and pottering around the garden.

  Our lives had, by necessity, been action-filled and that was how we both liked them.

  But the baby would change that. Even I was worried about how I would deal with it, and Sinjin…? Who the hell knew?

  “Do you think Sinjin will be a good father?” Maybe Dureau wasn’t the best person for me to have this conversation with but he was the most ‘here right now’.

  Dureau looked at me with a deliberately blank face. “I honestly cannot tell if you are screwing with me, testing me or recording me so you can play it back to Sinjin who will then try to kill me.”

  “Okay,” I held up my hands as I laughed. No, Dureau didn’t have Sinjin’s wit, but there were times he made me laugh. “Firstly; if Sinjin tried to kill you, you’d be killed. Sorry; that’s the way it is. Secondly; I’m not doing any of the above, I’m just asking because it’s on my mind. Furthermore, I don’t have anyone else to talk to right now. So I’m asking.”

  “Yeah, I think he’ll be a great father,” said Dureau, not breaking his stride.

  “You’re just saying that.”

  “Damn right I’m just saying that! I don’t want to have this conversation, Bryn. For a hundred different reasons. I get that things are difficult for you right now—I can’t even imagine what you must be going through and I will do anything to help you get your child back. But I won’t be drawn into this. You’re not the only one with shit going on, Bryn. Think about that.”

  I couldn’t recall him ever talking to me quite like that before.

  Usually, even when he was asserting himself, there was always just a hint of the puppy dog about Dureau when he talked to me; desperate for approval. Maybe he was finally over me.

  “Is everything okay with you?” I asked, trying to be the good friend.

  Dureau snorted, as if I was missing something obvious.

  “Everything’s fine. It’s just… these are problems Klaasje and I will never have.”

  A cold wave of realization shivered through me and I realized what a selfish bitch I was being. “Oh shit, Dureau, I’m sorry.”

  He held up a hand to stop me. “Don’t be. I get it. I would imagine that when your child is on the line, then everything else in the world ceases to be of importance. I don’t want to be the jerk who doesn’t understand that. Your problems are bigger than mine.”

  “Doesn’t mean that yours don’t matter,” I said, gently.

  Everything had worked out for Sinjin and me. Well… given the current situation that was obviously not the case, but other stuff had. Maybe we too often took for granted the fact that we were even able to have a child together, something that wasn’t supposed to be possible for a vampire. Like Klassje.

  I knew Dureau wanted kids. I was also starting to understand how much he loved Klassje. Being with her meant he gave up on that dream of a family, or at least of having one in the conventional way. He and I would have had children together, and maybe, no matter how much he cared for Klassje, there were still some confusing feelings on that point because it would have all been so much easier.

  “Does Klassje want kids?” I asked, cautiously.

  Dureau flashed me a blank look. “She… Hard to say. She’s been a vampire a while so she never really thought about it. It’d be like wishing you had wings. Now she’s with me and we’ve talked about it and I guess she’s not averse to the idea of adopting.

  But I don’t think she’s passionate about it either. I get the impression she could take or leave kids and…” A look of real melancholy crept across his features. “I don’t know if I want to have them with someone who’s indifferent. Besides; what would we adopt?”

  You couldn’t go to the local orphanage and order a vampire/Fae crossbreed. Fae children seldom needed adopting and a human child would be powerless and would be outlived by its parents.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. It didn’t mean much but Dureau still smiled.

  “Thank you. It’s actually helpful just to say it out loud. And for the record; I didn’t think Sinjin would be a good partner, but the bastard vampire proved me wrong. I don’t know if he would make a good father, Bryn, but I definitely wouldn’t count him out.”

  #

  SINJIN

  It was mid-morning when we saw Bryn and the fop emerging out of the trees, none the worse for wear. My instant reaction on seeing my tempest, unharmed and back with me, was relief, but seeing her with Chevalier corrupted that honest emotion, almost on the instant.

  I wanted to be better than this, I wanted to be the bigger man and to remember what Klassje had said to me last night, but the thought of the two of them spending the night together, and the sight of them now, so close and friendly, burned beneath my skin.

  “Sinjin, I’m so happy to see you,” Bryn embraced me with honest affection and I hugged her back, pushing down my worst instincts.

  “I was worried. Those… what were they called?” I started.

  “Lunantishee.”

  “Indeed. They seemed to be after you.”

  My hellion nodded. “We ended up running. There were so many of them.”

  “You ran from a fight?” I raised my eyebrows.

  Bryn shook her head. “I know. It’s not like me and it went against the grain, but we didn’t come here to start a war.”

  “So I have been told.”

  “You got scolded too, huh?”

  “I wanted to go back for you.”

  “I wanted to go after you.” I smiled.

  “We are equally foolish.”

  Bryn grinned her irrepressible smile. “I figure there are worse things to be.”

  “Come on,” Odran took charge. “We’d best be hastin’ away.”

  We shouldered our packs and set out again, heading for the Ice Mountains.

  “How was your night with the frog?” I asked as casually as I could, but I still thought I saw the small flicker of annoyance pass across Bryn’s face.

  “Fine. Did you know rowan trees are protection against bad spirits?”

  “I did not. So you were not disturbed in the night?”

  “No,” Bryn replied.

  “I am pleased to hear that.”

  “And you were all safe h
ere?”

  I shrugged. “I was unable to sleep much.”

  “Oh, how come?”

  “I was worried about you.”

  Her face softened. “Sometimes you can be really quite sweet.”

  I sighed. “Well, I would appreciate it if you would keep that information to yourself. If people were to find out that one of the few Master Vampires left in the world was ‘sweet’ then…”

  “It would damage your street cred?”

  “Irreparably.”

  We laughed together, but I could not stop my gaze from moving to Chevalier as he walked with Klassje.

  #

  BRYN

  I could see Sinjin looking at Dureau, with that needle sharp gaze of his. He’d enough self-control, so far, not to actually say the words and ask me, but I knew what he was thinking.

  “Is there something bothering you?” I pressed him.

  “It would be strange if there were not, wouldn’t it?”

  I shook my head. “We played this game already, Sinjin. If there’s something you want to say, something you want to ask me about last night, then just ask it.”

  He shook his head. “I have nothing to ask.”

  “Because you trust me ?”

  “Of course I trust you! It is him I do not trust.” The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them and all that was left for either of us was to regret it.

  “Dureau is with Klassje.” I tried not to think about some of the things Dureau had said last night. “They are happy together.” I also tried not to think about some of the things he had confided in me that morning.

  “And he was in love with you.”

  “People get over their crushes.”

  “I would hardly call that a crush,” he said, his jaw going tight.

  “Dureau is my friend.”

  “Are you certain that is the extent?”

  I looked at him and frowned. I wasn’t sure what he was insinuating, but it pissed me off. “Grow up.”

  Sinjin drew himself up. “I am six hundred years old.”

  “Then act like it.”

  “How would that be exactly?”

  I levelled a dark stare at him. “Don’t make light of this, Sinjin. Either you trust me or you don’t. Those are the options.